Rime review (2026): is the free plan enough?
Voice models for phone agents: text to speech and speech to speech
Black Friday: is there a Rime sale?
Rime report card
Fair · out of 4.0 · graded Nov 12, 2026
Best for voice models for phone agents
Rime sells voice models for phone and call-center agents: text to speech and speech to speech, billed by the minute. The Free plan gives $50 of usage a month with no card. But the paid Scale plan is $100 a month, custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and a SOC 2 report are Enterprise only, and it is a developer product.
Who Rime is for
- Fits if you build phone or call-center voice agents
- Makes sense if you want per-minute pricing with no monthly fee
Who Rime is not for
- Not for you if you want a text box for voiceovers, because this is built for agents
- Pricey if you want a plan, since Scale starts at $100 a month
- Watch out: custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and the SOC 2 report are Enterprise only
- Watch out: speech to text is listed as free only until Nov 19
Why Rime gets a 2.2
Five grades, each with its reason. The GPA is their average: an A is 4 points, an F is none.
- CValue for moneyFlex has no monthly fee: Mist v3 at $0.030 a minute, Coda v2 $0.050, Prism $0.080. Scale is $100 a month with rates 20% lower. The one paid plan is far above the category's middle.
- BFree plan and trial$50 of usage every month on all models, no card. For testing an agent that is a lot of minutes.
- CFeaturesSpeech, speech to speech and speech to text, with cloud, VPC and on-prem options on Enterprise. Custom voices and compliance reports sit there too.
- DEase of useNo store rating on record. It is an API for developers building agents.
- BPlatforms and integrationsWeb and an API, with LiveKit, Pipecat and Twilio listed.
What these grades rest on. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Rime Labs's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. How we review and grade.
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<a href="https://toolgpa.com/tools/rime#review"><img src="https://toolgpa.com/badge/rime.svg" alt="Rime: 2.2 GPA on ToolGPA" width="196" height="56"></a>Where Rime stands among AI voice generators
Rime's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 18 of the 43 other AI voice generators we grade, and level with 9.
It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 39 of 43) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0).
Its paid plans start at $100 a month, against a middle price of $10 for the category: 33 of the 33 others that charge start lower.
On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.0 out of 4. 24 tools score higher and cost less.
Each grade against the category
Every bar is all 44 AI voice generators we grade, cut by the letter each got. Rime’s own letter is outlined.
- CValue for moneyAbove 4 of 43, level with 27
- BFree plan and trialAbove 39 of 43, level with 4
- CFeaturesAbove 0 of 43, level with 26
- DEase of useAbove 0 of 43, level with 6
- BPlatforms and integrationsAbove 20 of 43, level with 21
Price against what you get
Each dot is one of 34 AI voice generators. Further left costs less, and higher up scores better on features, ease of use and platforms. Point at a dot to see which tool it is.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Keep Rime, or make your own?
Keep it
To replace Rime you would be making a voice model, which you can rent by the minute but not make. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one.
It costs $1,200 a year.
What you could not
- A voice model, which you can rent by the minute but not make.
- A voice model trained on your recordings.
- An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it.
- Speech turned into text you can trust.
- It plugs into other products, LiveKit, Pipecat and Twilio among them, and has an API.
What this rests on. Rime’s listing: what it does, where it runs, what it plugs into and what it costs. It is a judgement about the kind of software this is. We have not built a replacement for it, and making your own means looking after it too. How we decide, and every tool’s verdict.
What is Rime?
Rime sells voice models for businesses that run conversations over the phone. Its Mist v3 and Coda v2 text-to-speech models and its Prism speech-to-speech model are metered by the minute, with real-time streaming over WebSockets and 8 kHz telephony audio. The pricing page lists a monthly free allowance, a pay-as-you-go tier, a flat Scale plan and custom enterprise deals.
Worth knowing
- Flex has no monthly fee and bills usage by the minute: Mist v3 text to speech at $0.030, Coda v2 at $0.050 and Prism speech to speech at $0.080 a minute.
- Scale rates are 20% lower than Flex: $0.024 a minute for Mist v3, $0.040 for Coda v2 and $0.064 for Prism.
- Custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and the SOC 2 Type II report are limited to Enterprise.
- Rime's speech-to-text model is listed as free until Nov 19.
Key features
- Mist v3 text to speech
- Positioned as the lowest-latency model, with 78 voices in English, French, German and Spanish and a listed 37 ms median time to first audio.
- Coda v2 text to speech
- Positioned as the most natural model, with 313 voices across 10 languages including Japanese, Arabic and Hindi, and custom pronunciation lexicons.
- Prism speech to speech
- A model that hears the call, reasons over it and speaks; text is generated before audio so guardrails can check it, and it supports tool calls mid-call.
- Real-time streaming and telephony
- WebSocket streaming and 8 kHz phone audio are on every plan, with LiveKit, Pipecat and other agent-platform integrations.
- Custom voices and self-hosting
- Custom voice cloning and fine-tuning on your own calls are Enterprise features. The text-to-speech models can be self-hosted with Docker Compose or Kubernetes.
Rime pricing
As of Nov 12, 2026, Rime has a free plan, and paid plans start at $100 per month, with $100 of usage credit.
- Starts at
- $100 per month, with $100 of usage credit
- Free plan
- $50 of usage every month, renewing monthly, across Prism, Mist v3, Coda v2 and Rime speech to text. No card required.
- Free trial
- None listed
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $50 of usage each month on all models, no card required; email support and community docs. |
| Scale | $100per month, billed monthly to your card | $100 of credit a month that rolls over up to $200, with every rate 20% lower than Flex. Usage past the credit is billed at the same rates. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Volume rates billed annually, cloud, VPC or on-prem deployment, SLAs, custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and a SOC 2 Type II report. Sold through sales. |
Read from rime.ai on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Rime before you buy.
Works with
- LiveKit
- Pipecat
- Twilio
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Common questions
Does Rime have an Android app?
No Android app was listed when its pages were read on Nov 12, 2026. Rime is listed for Web.
Does Rime have an iPhone app?
No iPhone app was listed when its pages were read on Nov 12, 2026. Rime is listed for Web.
Is Rime open source?
Rime is not described as open source on its own site, as read on Nov 12, 2026.
Does Rime have an API?
Yes. Rime offers a public API, according to its own site.
Sources for this page
The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026.